Game Day Blog 16/82: Pool Party in the Big Apple

I’m way too excited about this. Honestly at this point I’ve basically accepted the role of Jesse’s life coach/personality agent and I straight up feel like somehow this recall will define my career in that profession. Not to mention it may define Jesse’s career as an Oiler. I mean, he doesn’t turn 20 until May, but everybody is expecting big things from my boy this time around. His short yet eventful time last year ended with a demotion to Bakersfield, and he never returned. This time, he’s immediately being placed into a top six role. It’s not with McDavid, as I’ve been hoping and praying for the better part of 13 months, but it’s a great start. Nuge is playing the best hockey of his career right now so I’m very stoked to see what the two of them can do. Milan still hasn’t caught Phil Kessel.

This Morning’s Opponent: New York Rangers.

That was the exact moment that got Dallas Eakins fired. That. Right there. Henrik Lundqvist had a 16 save shutout against us in what was arguably the worst hockey game I’ve ever witnessed in my entire life. He literally laughed at how easy it was after the game. That was the exact moment we hit rock bottom. I know there were tons that felt like rock bottom (if you forget, we recorded them all on a series documenting how historically awful we were titled Oil Change, because of course we fucking did) but this was the actual moment, right here. It’s been steadily uphill ever since. The next morning, MacT fired Eakins, and subsequently took over the head coaching role until he remembered how terrible he was at that as well (guy couldn’t manage, guy couldn’t coach, and now he’s in some upper management role for our team, the Oiler way!). Then we hired the OG Todd. Then we won the McLottery. Then we made the playoffs. Now we’ve won two straight AND JESSE’S BACK LIFE’S PRETTY DAMN GOOD!!

Fuck Henrik Lundqvist with all 16 of his useless saves.

Their Record: 8-7-2 and they’re currently the hottest team in hockey (five straight).

Our Record: 6-8-1 and we’re currently the hottest team in Western Canada (two straight).

What do they have? NOT CAM ANYMORE BITCHESSSSS. Petey’s been murdered 100 different ways by Garth Snow and Ray Shero but the one GM he completely picked apart was Glen Sather, of all goddamn people, who gave the Oilers one last gift before taking his Cuban cigar and sailing off into the sunset. Now he doesn’t exist anymore. The list of GM’s Petey can obliterate is beginning to dwindle.

They have four Stanley Cups and they’ve been in existence since 1926. Okay?? Could you imagine being that perpetually inept? That makes our little trash heap circa 2007-2016 look like a mild slump. And if it wasn’t for the Oilers, these dickheads wouldn’t have won the Cup since 1940. NINETEEN FOURTY!! And that’s exactly what New Yorkers deserve. They don’t deserve the Giants sneaking their wildcard asses into a Super Bowl victory. They don’t deserve the Yankees and their shitty Empire winning a billionty World Series titles and Aaron Judge smacking home runs to the moon. No. They deserve the Rangers, and all of their underachieving bliss. They deserve Knicks and Mets and Nets and Islanders and Jets jabbing needles into their eyes for hundreds of decades. Potvin doesn’t suck, you do.

Pavel Buchnevich is so goddamn good though, and Chris Kreider will make a great Oiler in February.

What do we have? YA BOY’S BACK AND YOU ALREADY KNOW IT:

Jesse landed in NYC last night. They have GREAT pizza in New York.

Casual reminder that if it goes into OT we’ve already won.

I hope this guy made the treck from Newark to Manhattan. He’s the MOP and GGG every game:

Anyways, back to Jesse. I’ve already talked about what a huge opportunity this is for my friend. People have been pointing to his pedestrian AHL stats as some mythical concern, but guess what? Leon had two points in six games before being recalled back in 2015. And now he makes ALL of the money. So what I’m saying is, #inJesseWeTrust. Let’s goddamn go.

Did you know? The Rangers are playing outdoors against the Sabres on January 1 at Citi Field in Queens and they’re not the home team. They’re playing an away game, at home, against a team from practically Canada, because reasons and stuff.

Prediction: God we’re so unbelievably shitty in early games. Last year we somehow stumbled to a 3-2 record in starts before 5:00. One of those games was a 1-0 shootout win against Montreal in a game that felt like someone put a wire speculum on me and stuffed my vulnerable eyes into salt water for three hours. Another was a 2-1 win over Detroit, a game in which I don’t remember a single memorable thing. The year before last we played two games in the noon slot and got beat by a combined score of 13-2. This year we’re already flying out of the gate to an 0-2 start on afternooners. Christ.

HOW-GODDAMN-EVER, we’re also 3-0 this year in “former team” games. We beat Adam Larsson’s Devils twice, we beat Ryan Strome’s Islanders. And now we play Cam Talbot’s Rangers. We haven’t won against these idiots since former Edmonton Oiler regular and current ZSC Lion Lauri Korpikoski netted a hatty against them back on December 11, 2015. We’re due. Oil win 5-3. Nuge scores, McJesus and Draidaddy get two points, each. Zack Kassian scores his first of the year.